Mergers & Acquisitions

Yahoo May Soon Sell Bookmarking Site Delicious

Yahoo may be soon selling the bookmarking site, known as Delicious, for somewhere between $1 million and $2 million, reports Business Insider.

Unnamed sources predict the sale could go through next week or the week after, according to the Techie Insider. The likely sales price is less than what Yahoo paid for the site in 2005, Techie Insider adds.

It is unclear who the likely buyer is but there is some speculation it is a "strategic partner" such as StumbleUpon (News - Alert).

Business Insider reports that StumbleUpon just raised $17 million in an investment round, so it could afford the likely asking price. Delicious is dependent on Yahoo’s technology for its infrastructure so it is taking some time for Yahoo to get it off its infrastructure, Business Insider said. Yahoo uses Delicious internally.

There was some speculation that the asking price was around $5 million but recent online reports identified the price as much lower.

News about Yahoo trying to sell off Delicious became public in December. TMCnet CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) noted in a December blog post that InformationWeek reported that Yahoo was targeting AltaVista, Delicious and other services for elimination. Yahoo responded it wasn’t going to shut down the service but was interested in selling it.

“We are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a(n) ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive,” according to a blog post from Delicious in December.

“My sense is that spinning off a social networking/bookmarking site like Delicious when this sort of service is what others are trying to emulate is incredibly illogical,” Tehrani responded in December. “What it proves, however, is the company is just too large to manage and current management has to reduce the size of the company to get a grip on it all. … This Delicious mess is a problem Yahoo just doesn’t need.”

Ed Silverstein is a TMCnet contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.